Set the Fields Alight
by catherwauling
Summary: The missing maternal half-sister of the Boy Who Lived returns to the wizarding world under the cover of shadows and lies. A GoF AU with a powerful protagonist and dark themes. Hermione/OC. Femslash.
1. The Return: Dead Girl Walking

**Full Summary:** The Wizarding World had long believed the bastard daughter of Lily Potter had died. Over a decade after her disappearance, she returns to Wizarding Britain, claiming to have only recently discovered her identity as the so-called "Forgotten Girl". Many believe her; a handful question her; all are curious. Did her kidnapper and de facto guardian really die from a Potions experiment gone wrong? Is the prodigal daughter's enrollment at Hogwarts solely to get to know her brother? Exactly what was the girl taught during her missing years? And why does no one know the identity of her father?

Concurrently, a spate of mysterious murders shocks and appalls the Wizarding public. No one can find a connection between the victims, other than the killer's morbid modus operandi, and the unusual attention of the typically apathetic ghost community. And soon, the Dark Mark is cast in the skies over a Death Eater riot at the Quiddich World Cup Finals. A connection is suggested, though none are found.

Then, the Triwizard Tournament comes to Hogwarts...

**AN: **This story features my OFC, Camellia Evans, a budding Dark witch with an enchanted trunk full of issues. I came up with her when thinking of a counterpoint to Harry, whose "power" over Voldemort is said to be love: what if love was more destructive than a mother's sacrifice and a teenage boy's compassion? While love holds Harry together through his trials, it could very well tear Camellia apart through hers. (Camellia will also function as a counterpoint to Harry in other ways: her methods, beliefs, actions, etc. will be comparable but significantly dissimilar, i.e. Harry's Gryffindor nobility vs. Camellia's retribution fetish.)

The primary _romantic _pairing will be between Camellia and Hermione. However, Camellia's relationships with other canon characters (and one OC in particular) will be just as significant to the story. Not all of these relationships will be happy.

**Genre:** Mystery, Horror, Hurt/Comfort, Romance

**Warning:** this story discusses dark themes, including child abuse, torture, human sacrifice, murder, and rape. All sexual scenes will be non-graphic or otherwise work through implication. References to past and present traumas are interspersed throughout the narrative. This story centers on a protagonist that has, to an extent, internalized their experiences of abuse. Several characters will be generally terrible. Not all of them die horribly.

I don't condone anything, and I don't own Harry Potter.

(I would further like to note that my English is a mess of Canadianisms and reluctantly acquired Americanisms, and while I'll try to keep voices consistent with canon, I might fail terribly. Sorry in advance.)

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><p>The Return:<strong> Dead Girl Walking<strong>

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><p>The air simmered and shook with the heat, and were it not for the bullets of sweat clinging her damp clothes to her skin, or the cracks in her throat that seemed to grind like brittle glass with every step she took, Camellia could almost pretend that she was walking through water.<p>

The daylight star was at its apex, and its blaze felt like gravity. The highway stretched on in front of her, beyond the reach of her eyes. In the distance, she could see mountains, appearing as a blue echo of something shouted long away.

This was no ordinary road, no ordinary heat, no ordinary noonday on the Nevada desert. There was no hint of grays or blues in the horizon line, no gradient into the sky. No yellow grass like mottled fur on the endless sands on either side of the asphalt.

Some time back, Camellia had stepped off the Muggle highway onto a road of a decidedly less mundane construction.

It explained how she had got from the passenger side of a pickup truck she had hitchhiked on since the dawn, to the middle of a barren highway, barefoot and without her pack, her own bloody footprints following her like a tail.

Despite the pain in her throat, and on her feet; despite her exhaustion and the heat—Camellia smiled.

For most of her life, she had known Esther Morrigan as both her guardian and mentor. The Dark witch had specialized in many oblique fields of magic, simply for the fascination they struck in her at their elegant manipulation of the natural world.

The late Esther's "illusions" had always blurred the line between fiction and reality.

She recognized her mentor's handiwork now, for the air was saturated with her signature. It tingled on her tongue with every dry breath of oxygen, and pierced her feet with every step.

The young witch smiled both in recognition, and with the flush of accomplishment.

She had made it.

For going on a month, now, Camellia had been clinging to a slim, barely tangible hope. She had started her journey from Esther's old safe house in Boston, and crossed the country following the route that the woman had taken many years ago. Esther had told her she had secrets scattered across the States, far from the eyes of those who hunted her across the Atlantic.

Camellia had been hunting down one secret, in particular.

And if her presence in Esther's own spellwoven desert proved anything, it was that the Dark witch had hidden _something _here.

The parameters of the illusion were simple, but ingenious. Everything that was perceived corresponded to the illusion's function, and in the resonance between the victim's mind and the Ether, the strength of the trap was amplified.

It was more dextrous, more artful, than a simple compulsion. It relied not on the brute magical strength of a barrier, but the natural inclinations of the human mind.

The crushing heat reflected an actual gravity, dragging down the weight of Camellia's bones through her body. The long, endless road and the naked desert honed the eye to a particular point, so that it would not feel the need to look anywhere else. The literal trail of blood emphasized her finite point on an infinite journey, diluting her sense of time and the sharp edges of her rational mind.

With the components of the illusion puzzled out, Camellia turned her gaze away from the vanishing horizon—

—And spotted the outlines of a ruined shack in the middle of the sand, to her left.

She took a step forward, and found herself back in the passenger side of the truck.

Her head rung, and her vision glazed. She could feel ash and gas line the walls of her throat, the familiar coppery tang of blood coating the buds of her tongue. A sharp ache in her chest led her to look down, at where the seatbelt had prevented her from being tossed out the front window and bashing her head in on a rock outside.

The Muggle driver that she had hitched a ride from hadn't had either caution or luck. His clearly broken body lay several meters away from where the truck had hit Esther's barrier head-on and crumpled at the force.

Camellia fumbled at the seatbelt release, and slowly extracted herself from the wreckage. Catching her foot, she sprawled to a heap on the sand.

She recognized another one of her late mentor's trademarks: her spellcraft had the tendency to be fatal to unwary victims.

The Muggle had, at Camellia's instruction, driven off the highway deep into the desert. The road was no longer visible, but the truck's wreckage lay like an arrow on a map. Somewhere in the distance, the ruin of a shack awaited her.

Within it, she hoped, were the answers she was searching for.

Collecting her pack, she drew out a water bottle and drained it by half.

She then drew her "wand", and cast a number of diagnostic and sensory spells.

As she expected, she could detect nothing anomalous standing immediately next to the wreckage. Only when she moved forward, in the direction of the Muggle's body, did her wand fail to cast at all.

Camellia smiled at Esther's ingenuity. Her mentor had placed her wards on the edges of a magical dead zone.

The young witch would have to finish her trek by foot.

She stopped by the Muggle's body, kneeling briefly to confirm it lacked a pulse. The skin was still warm to the touch, likely more from the desert heat than the body's diminishing temperature. The man's skin had been pale already, but now there were hints of blue in his corpse's complexion.

Much of the blood was already dry.

Camellia looked up at the sky. The sun had passed its peak a while ago. She had been trapped in the illusion for longer than she thought, but not long enough for the harsh daylight to be less of a problem.

She used the half-empty bottle to wash away some of the sweat and heat, pouring it down her head and back. Her short, normally wild dark hair clung to her forehead in uneven locks. Her feet simmered in their shoes.

Dark eyes gazed towards a destination yet out of their range.

She picked herself up, and began the long walk.

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><p><em>The man was a frail thing, with thin, shivering limbs and a sheen of cold sweat glazing his skin under the light of Esther's wisp. His heart pounded deep and quick, veins bulging thick and black, ribs straining against his naked chest. His binds prevented him from moving much, but the chair still rocked and creaked under his tremors.<em>

_Ten-year-old Camellia wondered which would break first: the man, or the chair._

_The girl stood several steps away from the man, her feet together at the edge of the chalk ritual circle. She was dressed in a raggedy gown that had once been white, but under the wisp appeared a mottled green stained in older, darker shades. Her limbs, like the man's, were thin; unlike his, they were perfectly still._

_In her left hand, she held a pale knife._

_Esther's hands wrapped around the young girl's head, fingers clasping tight. Camellia yearned to turn around to face her mentor, to bury herself in the older witch's robes, in a mix of fear and need for sanctuary, both from the same source. When she tried, Esther held her even more firmly, digging in to her skull with mirrored points of pain._

"_You shouldn't look away," Esther whispered._

_Her tone, once harsh and venomous to the young girl's ears, now rang a dissident tune. Notes smudged on sheet music, errors in frail fingers held over piano keys. A string out of tune. It compelled the girl more than the bark of an order ever could, convinced her that it was her quill over the parchment, her hands over the keys, her fingers on the knob to twist the string._

_Her choice to step forward, eyes locked on the wretched face of the doomed man, with a firm grip on the knife._

_She knew she could resist. She could loosen her fingers and let the knife clatter on the floor. Bend her knees and let the fragile weight of her body bring her down. Scatter the chalk so that the circle was no more. The ritual required at least one willing participant, and little could convince a Muggle terrified out of his wits to give up his blood to a budding Dark witch._

_Esther would punish her, of course. But Camellia knew she could pull through the pain, sooner or later. However furious Esther became, the older witch would never risk the younger crossing the Veil._

_Would not her fate be better, even by the palest of shades, to what awaited the man before her?_

_Yet such doubts, she knew, were fickle._

_All it took was Esther's firm hand on her shoulder, for the young girl's worries to slip away like a soft sheet come a warm morning._

_What were Camellia's doubts, after all, compared to the weight of her mentor's disappointment?_

"_I won't look away," Camellia replied._

_The man cried. The woman stood silent._

_And the young girl's lips parted, a hint of white teeth belying a curious smile._

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><p>The frail wood shattered, and splinters cut the flesh of a young witch's legs as she further parted the breach she made in the wall of a boarded-up shack. Her hands drew drops of red as she flung loose pieces of wood off of bent nails, in a deliberate fervor that barely belied her excitement.<p>

Camellia gasped in the stale air of the shack, bloodying her bare knees while bent forwards to ease the strain of her lungs. It was sweltering inside, and the young witch thought she could see some of the old metals simmer in the long-contained heat. Dryness and dust seemed to be the small building's garb, utterly abandoned and empty save for a battered rug crumpled suspiciously in a corner.

She finished off her water, casting the last of her bottles aside.

She knelt beside the carpet with a critical eye, examining the oddities in its weaving. It seemed more like a tapestry that once belonged in the walls of a manor house, or a castle, than something left in an anti-magic hole in the middle of Nevada.

The crest it depicted, in particular, seemed far from American.

The crest featured four animals, each with their respective colours: a lion in reds, a serpent in velvet green, a badger in yellows, and a bronze eagle amidst a backdrop of blue.

The letter _H _stood at the crest's centre.

Camellia drew her wand and slowly lowered it towards the tapestry, taking care to hold it in a way that exposed the glyph inscribed near the hilt. As suspected, the glyph subtly shifted as the wand drew near.

Camellia held back a wry smile.

The tapestry clearly hid a trapdoor beneath, for in what she was certain was the centre of the magical dead zone, was a proverbial calm at the eye of the storm: a small area in which spells could be cast, and enchantments could persist. Likely, this was due to one of Esther's artifacts in what Camellia now believed to be one of her late mentor's caches.

The tapestry itself, seemingly benign, was heavily charmed.

Camellia fetched one of the broken pieces of wood she had kicked and torn out of the wall—a piece half as long as she was tall, and just the simple trick she needed in order to bypass yet another one of Esther's traps.

Using the piece of wood, she swiftly lifted the tapestry and flung both it and the piece aside.

Her hands barely missed the spiralling flames that consumed the wood; they did not miss the burst of embers and ash.

Rubbing her hands on her shirt, the young witch glared at the offending tapestry, now just faded fabric outside the "eye" of the dead zone.

Esther had taught her that even the most powerful witches and wizards could be stymied by problems that required the most mundane of solutions. Such, she said, was the pride and the fall of the Pureblood families where most of the magical knowledge and expertise were concentrated. Prejudice against Muggles led to a very specific kind of blindness, one that could be deftly exploited by a witch that had no scruples "mucking" with the methods of non-magicals.

As expected, Camellia's "solution" had revealed a trapdoor—one of a design she was all too familiar with.

The trapdoor, unlike the rest of the shack, was wrought from metal. It featured an intricate design on its surface, of a mottled raven with a bared skull, its wings bound by gnarled branches—

Esther's symbol.

Thorns decorated the branches, a crown of them in place of a handle or a keyhole.

Camellia ran her hands over the metal, feeling out the ridges in the feathers. She spread the blood already seeping from her hands over the thorns embedded in the branches, until each was coated in a blackening red.

The metal seemed to ring at the touch of her blood. Upon completion, the relief came alive—the branches crushing the raven's wings, holding up its dying body in the simile of a crucifixion.

With a groan, the trapdoor slowly slid open.

Holding her expression still, Camellia crouched down into the darkness. A cautious anticipation flickered in her heartbeat as she felt around the edge and grasped the first rung of a ladder.

She descended a short height, and was surprised to find her boots meeting carpet, rather than the harsh _clack _of wood or stone. Pulling out her wand once more, she cast a pale green wisp that quickly illuminated the space.

The cache was a small room, perhaps twice as long and wide as the girl was tall. Jars filled with strange fluids, many suspending crude, shriveled organs and animal limbs, were interspersed with tomes and scrolls on the shelves built into the walls. Books were stacked on the floor, a number of them held open by paperweights that glimmered curiously in the light of Camellia's wisp, belying their magical nature.

Against the wall farthest from the ladder was an ornate wooden desk, atop which lay several more books, an inkwell that had likely long since dried, and a scattering of quills atop old parchment. A human skull with a cold white gem in its left eye was seated on a chair laced with cobwebs, and next to the chair, was a dusty, weathered trunk.

Camellia ran her fingers appreciatively across the spines of a number of the tomes, and let a smile slip her grasp as she read several of the titles. The books were on subjects forbidden in most Wizarding communities—from necromancy and the Darker blood arts, to traditions banned due to ignorance and fear, rather than the typical moralities: shapechanging, dreamwalking, and studies on the Ether. There were histories, too, driven underground by contemporary Ministries—either due to revisionism, or the impalpability of the authors.

In short—an invaluable, likely irreplaceable, collection of books.

There was little wonder then, why Esther had hid them here—nearly a continent and an ocean away from her pursuers in Britain.

Camellia glanced at the skull, whose gem had started to sing. Moving over to it, she cast a number of identifier spells to confirm her suspicions. Upon her casting, the gem gave off a glint, and rattled in its socket.

She safely picked up the skull in her hands, and allowed herself a small sliver of satisfaction. The object was the source of the "eye" in the dead zone, and thus the "anchor" for the cache's wards. With further study of its properties, Camellia was confident that she'd be able to Apparate in and out with little trouble.

Putting aside the skull, she studied the desk, quickly recognizing Esther's fluid handwriting on the open parchment. Esther had written on the margins of many of the books, and slips of Muggle note-cards were stuck between the pages. The drawers revealed more papers, and several bound journals, amidst a mix of objects that Camellia would have to examine later, in order to determine whether they were enchanted, or simply idle trinkets.

A picture started to emerge, pieces gathered from what she'd found on her journey to the cache, its protections, and the items inside it. Gaps and missing links were filled and bound with what Camellia gathered from Esther's notes, eyes flitting between runic diagrams and careful illustrations in thin, dark ink.

Camellia could swear her heartbeat _stumbled, _when she finally made her conclusion.

The young witch knelt beside the trunk. Its construction was familiar to her, being like many of the locks with which Esther had secured her items back in her Massachusetts house. A latch, shaped like a set of sharp teeth, adorned the front of the trunk. Esther pricked her thumb on the latch, and whispered a spell; the dot of red on silver burned a thin trail of smoke, and the sound of a lock unclasping told her that her "payment" had been accepted.

Camellia opened the trunk, and froze.

She had found what she'd been searching for.

Delicately, she lifted a tattered old cloak into her hands, the touch of the fabric bringing back a rush of memories she had previously believed forgotten. The cloak had once been white, with a colourless floral pattern that had danced along the border. It was a small thing, barely able to wrap around her shoulders, but she recalled how large it had once seemed in comparison to her wispy childhood body.

It was an answer, of sorts, though whether it was the answer she'd been hoping to find, she did not know. She did not know how to read a story in her pulse, to weave a tale from the paling of her cheeks or the tightly controlled stillness of her fingers. The knot in her chest could be due to either anticipation or apprehension. The sensation of roots winding round her ribs, binding them tight—what did that tell her, other than the sight, the _touch_, of the familiar blanket affected her?

It was, after all, the blanket of a dead girl—and the papers in the trunk told all the lies she needed.

After nearly thirteen years, it was time for the bastard girl of Lily Potter to return to the Wizarding World.

Camellia Evans was going "home".

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><p><em>Next up:<em> Remus tries to adjust after PoA, and fails miserably.


	2. The Return: The Spider and the Wolf (1)

**AN:** Updates on this might be shamelessly sparse for a while.

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><p>The Return: <strong>The Spider and the Wolf (Part I)<strong>

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><p>The village was little more than a series of ramshackle huts and clobbered houses on the outskirts of a nearby market town. Its roads, though paved, were worn with the footfalls of many ages; its lone bridge crossed a dried-up river memorialized by a trail of old stones.<p>

On the edge of this village was a small home with splintering walls and a forest of weeds finding habitat in the small front yard and the cracks on the wood of the balcony. Most mornings, it looked abandoned, with nary a flicker of light nor movement from behind the thick, drawn curtains. Those in the village passed it by with little notice, save for its handful of children that would play by daring one another to pass the picket fence.

It was during the nights that this house came to exhibit a strange half-life.

The dim flicker of a candle; the whisper of wind rattling dish-piles in the kitchen; footsteps groaning old floorboards; the slam of a door or two, followed by an unnatural silence.

And—once every few nights—an exhausted figure, curling up in the remnants of a chair on the front porch, looking very much as he wished for the decrepit wood to break under his weight and swallow his bones.

Few knew the man that resided in the Halflight Shack, as it came to be called. The delivery girl of the village, a pale, corn-headed thing, would sometimes catch glimpses and nods during her rounds. The grocer that lived in the village and worked in the town, a portly middle-aged man whose wife was a Squib and his daughter stillborn, found an echo of his face in the man's hallowed eyes; he brought supplies from his shop every weekend, and tasked the corn-headed girl to ensure that the Halflight man had food and drink enough.

One of the village children, slim and tattered in cloth and hair and skin, braved the fence to see the Halflight man glimpsing him through a window, and did not run straightaway.

The only soul from either the town or the village that could truly say they knew the Halflight man was a retired Potioneer named Agatha; every month, she would hobble, cane in one hand and brown bag in the other, all the way to the reclusive figure's home. She would disappear within for hours before returning to her home, a wistful smile softly pulling at the aged trenches that lined her face.

That was, until, an old man with half-moon glasses spirited the Halflight man away, leaving the run-down home truly abandoned for the stretch of a year.

It was a difficult place for Remus Lupin to return to, but it was the only home he had. The walls of Hogwarts School welcomed him no longer; the truth of his blood had exiled him from such a sanctuary. He did not begrudge the Headmaster, Albus Dumbledore, for acquiescing to the school's Board of Directors; the Howlers and other letters would have come soon enough, from the mob of parents outraged that the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor was a Dark creature, himself.

In the seclusion of secrets and lies of omission, Remus could pretend he was just any other wizard. He could feign the life of a normal human, the career of an expert in magic and Defensive spells; he could pretend, in a classroom full of young students, that he was not a werewolf tenuously held back by a concoction of modified Wolfsbane.

In the light of day, in the face of truth—Remus Lupin could no longer live such lies. No matter how comforting or fulfilling they had been.

So he resigned his post, before the Board of Directors could take action; before the mobs could light their torches and raise their pitchforks; before he was forced to witness the lingering fear of the Dark and the dangerous in the eyes of pupils that had once looked up to him with admiration.

So he returned to that ramshackle village, and the so-called Halflight Shack.

His _true _home of the last several years was little changed since he had left it with Professor Dumbledore. The weeds were still there, along with the rot. The sink faucet still leaked when he tried to use the hot water. The stairs still creaked like an undead orchestra. The heater for the bathwater was still broken, meaning he had to use a charm to take a warm shower in the mornings.

There were still cobwebs littering the unused guest room; the spiders likely had several litters of children, while Remus had been gone.

As he settled back in, and felt the weeks begin to pass, Remus could've sworn that it was as if he'd never left: as if Hogwarts had been some fever dream from which he had recovered, with only the scars of memory making a lasting imprint.

It was not until late June, days before the full moon, when Remus realized that something had indeed changed.

The girl on his porch was a wispy thing, with spindly limbs, gaunt cheeks, and short-cut dark hair that fluttered madly in the breeze. A mass of freckles, and the Asiatic yellow of her skin, were the only features that first distinguished her from a particularly corporeal ghost; even still, Remus feared that she might scatter into whispers in the wind.

"Are you Mister Lupin?" the girl asked—and for a breath, the man paled.

Her voice sounded hauntingly familiar.

Dimly, he nodded, trying to shake off the feeling that he knew this girl, from some time before. Some strange lost history, hints of it in his memories, beckoned him to stir and let the girl into his home without further introduction.

The girl, fortunately, was more forthcoming.

"Name's Vanessa," she said. "I'm Agatha's replacement."

"Replacement?"

That was how Remus learned that Agatha the Potioneer had passed while he'd been away. The girl gave him an apologetic smile, and told him that old age had finally caught up with the old witch's weak heart.

"Went as peacefully as she could, I reckon," she consoled. "I was her apprentice, long ago. Thought I could take up for her for a bit, as a way of saying my goodbyes."

"I'm sorry," Remus replied, "and thank you for the news. I didn't know."

The girl gave him a weak smile.

"Would you like some tea?" he offered. "I've nothing more right now, I'm afraid."

She shook her head. "Thanks for the offer, but I got a batch to brew back home. I'm just here to drop this off," she held up a brown paper bag.

"You live in the village?"

"For the next few months or so, at least."

Vanessa handed him the bag, and he raised an eyebrow.

"Shouldn't you be at school come September?" he asked. He could swear the girl was no older than fourteen, or fifteen. It was already unusual that someone her age should be a Potions apprentice, though he figured able candidates were in short supply in these parts.

"Me, at Hogwarts or something?" The girl shook her head. "Don't have the galleons for a place like that. Agatha was my teacher, off and on. So was an apothecary the next town over."

Remus opened the bag, and held out an opaque glass flask. Unstoppering it, he was surprised to find it still smoking a bluish colour—the sign of a particularly well prepared batch.

"You made this?"

"One and only," the girl smiled. "Don't be so surprised, I've been brewing most my life. Agatha would send for me whenever she was busy, too, so I'm sure I've whipped up one or two somethings for you, before."

Remus frowned. "And you have no problems with that?"

It was not only the difficulty—and potential lethality—of preparing Wolfsbane that made the potion so rare. Many Potioneers were unwilling to sell their batches individually, as the witches and wizards that sought to purchase them as such tended to be werewolves or sympathizers. Prejudice against Remus' kind was rife in the Wizarding World; most of the respectable Masters in the city would only sell to hunters, or the Ministry.

Agatha's readiness to prepare Wolfsbane for him was the main reason why Remus had first settled in the village. As rushed as his resignation and return to solitude was, he had not been prepared to find the old witch dead.

Were it not for the familiar sight of the glass flask—bearing Agatha's markings at the base, and the scratches he remembered as the product of his own fingernails—he would scarcely have believed his luck.

As it was, Remus subtly examined the girl with a more critical eye.

The girl gave off a lopsided grin.

"Way I figure," she explained, "you be drinking this, and you don't go down tearing up dear old Agatha's hometown. Better than flowers on her headstone any day, don't you think?"

The girl tilted her head, and her eyes flashed in realization.

"Oh—almost forgot," she blushed. "Guess you wouldn't want to go bottoms up before you know me."

Remus shrugged.

"Here," the girl drew out an envelope. "Dear Agatha left people letters. Swear the woman could read minds or some such, saw me coming down yonder all the way from her deathbed."

He opened the letter, and scanned Agatha's familiar scrawl.

"Sorry," he apologized, after he finished. "It's just—"

"Just what I said," she mused. "Don't go drinking weird stuff from strangers, yeah?"

"Right," he gave a weak smile.

"Well," she cleared her throat, "Stuff in there should last you throughout the moon. I'll be back to check on you in a few days, if you don't mind? See to it you don't have a fuss with the recipe I don't know about."

"It'll be disgusting either way," Remus muttered.

"That's your luck, ain't it?" the girl jibed. "Nice to meet you, anyway. You're nowhere near ghoul-like as the kids down in the village make you to be."

Remus chuckled. He knew very well the "game" the children liked to play with his fence—he'd seen them often enough in the mornings, pale faced and shivering. It was an amusing, if not an altogether bitter sight.

"Thank you," he said. "For this. How much do I owe you?"

She charged as much as Agatha did, which was not a lot compared to the cost of the potion's ingredients, but still strained the man's budget. He had his pay from Dumbledore mostly intact in his accounts, but he knew it would not last him long unless he could find another job.

A slight prospect, for a freshly outed werewolf.

"I'll be at Agatha's place, if you need anything" the girl offered. "Send by Marie—you know, the delivery girl?"

He nodded. "She's still around?"

"Not much changes in these parts," she smiled. "I'm as hot as kindling, right now, didn't you know?"

With that, and a flicker in the corner of her lips, the girl departed.

x-x-x

When the night of the full moon came, Remus shuttered the windows around his house, boarded the doors, locked the cupboards, and made his way into the basement.

The movements were as familiar to him as an old habit—and thus, after a year, just as strange. It called back a memory in his hands, his feet, and the work felt like tracing lines that had been drawn over and over before, digging deeper into the parchment with raw fingernails in place of a quill.

There was not yet a potion available that could "cure" his monthly transformations. Regardless of what he took, or what magic was cast, as long as the cursed blood beat through his veins, he would morph into his wolf-shape come the full moon. The best that even the strongest concoction of Wolfsbane could do was temper the mental effects of the event: Remus would retain enough of his human mind to control the beast, for the duration it emerged.

Yet there was, as always, a risk: something could go wrong with either the potion, his physiology, his mind, or any combination between. If Remus were to lose his tenuous grasp of sanity while in werewolf form, the results could be disastrous. Werewolves were fierce and dangerous creatures, prone to attacking anyone in sight; in the absence of an available target, werewolves would maul themselves.

Many of Remus' scars had come from self-inflicted wounds.

Therefore, Remus secured the doors and windows, warded the home from internal extrusion, and dragged his already stirring self into the basement prison he had constructed for just such nights.

He was determined to not lose control.

_Especially_ not so soon after he had nearly killed young Harry and his friends, just about a month ago.

The potion was a bitter, disgusting concoction—there was no way around the taste, for even minor manipulations to the formula could render it entirely ineffective. Remus swallowed the tears and held back the gag that came from its touch on its tongue, like the wet hand of an old corpse dragging the sides of his throat on its descent into his stomach.

Wolfsbane never sat well.

The transformation, as always, was fiercely painful: bones grew and snapped, flesh tore, blood boiled, skin broke; his body was mutilated from the inside as a twisted and Dark creature emerged, familiar though it should be a stranger. Fur and fangs and guttural growls erupted from the broken shell, leaving only a hint—a whisper, a fragile little thing—of the wizard known as Remus Lupin behind.

He awoke, battered and bloodied, to a hand held against his clammy cheek.

The Potioneer's apprentice—the girl—_Vanessa_—stood over him, her dark eyes heavy and her face hung with the pallor of the dead.

Remus backed away, his heart pounding.

"What are you doing here?!"

In a flash, her face changed: she blinked the weight off her eyes and pursed closed her lips; blood flushed back into her cheeks, and her expression curled into a hesitant, almost naïve smile.

"Told you I'd check up on you, didn't I?" she stood, and crossed her arms. "Know how long it's been since anyone's last heard a peep?"

Remus frowned. "How long have I been out?"

"Several days, I'd reckon." Her face fell. "New concoction didn't agree with you?"

"No, it's not that," the man shook his head. For the past year, he had been taking Wolfsbane prepared by none other than his schooltime rival and accredited Potions Master, Severus Snape. Snape's formula had been much more potent than anything Agatha, or anyone else, had ever brewed for him. To switch back to something of lower potency must have caused his long-term blackout.

His brows furrowed. "How did you get in?"

The girl shook her head. "Had to spell the doors in, don't worry—you've been down here all this time."

Remus exhaled slowly, relieved. "Thank Merlin."

The girl offered him her hand.

"You look starved," she noted. "Marie left some bags out on the porch. I've brought them into the kitchen—let's get something in you before you faint, yeah?"

Remus shook his head. "I'll be alright," he said, trying to get up by himself.

Vanessa stepped back, her look skeptical.

"If you curl up and die, there go my galleons," she mused. "S' also a bloody pain to clean up a rotting body. Not going to stick around to help with that, if that happens."

"Pleasant," Remus muttered, gaining his feet.

She paused, and he hesitated, the latter just noticing the sight of his clothes in rags, and the dank space of the basement illuminated solely by the light coming from atop the stairs.

"Don't be a fool," the girl muttered. "Eat something, you hear? Don't want to have to knock down your doors again, all burly-like, but with magic."

Remus let out a snort.

"I'll be fine. Thank you for your concern, Vanessa."

The girl made her way to the stairs, stopping for a moment with her foot on the first step. Remus didn't miss the way her gaze flickered around the shadows of the room. How she caught sight of the ruined boxes, the broken furniture, the unused chains with a silver glint heaped up in the corner—to be used in case there was no Wolfsbane to be had come a full moon.

"Sorry," she said. "I'll try to make the potion stronger, next time."

Remus shook his head. "Your brewing was fine—better than fine. I simply had difficulty adjusting. But thank you for the offer."

"Hey," the girl smirked—not entirely believably. "Happy werewolf means happy people, right? Don't want you to go gobbling up children, or scratching against the trees, or something."

Remus barked a humourless laugh as Vanessa ascended the stairs.

* * *

><p>Next: The terrible <em>Daily Prophet<em> is terrible.


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